Matrix Games

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ORIGINAL: Arjuna
We have also kick started a new East Front development. This will be a new game with new features, focussing primarily on Soviet doctrine. I won't hazard a guess as to when it will be ready...

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ORIGINAL:

As to the future, well as you are probably aware both Paul and I have been only working part time on game development for some time now. I finished a defence contract and was able to work full time on the game again this last month. We will be putting out a second patch for BFTB soon, hopefully within a month. Richard hopes to finish off the design of the new HTTR scenarios for the HTTR expansion pack next week. This will require BFTB. We'lll need to test these but hopefully we can release it in a couple of months.

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ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Going through the whole thread from back then it hit home that it was the shock of the price hike that was the initial issue - after that, the impulse had left and I never did buy. I occasionally look at it in the store and I don't know whether it's the initial price that still tastes bitter in my mouth or whether it is still a little high, I don't know - but I still have not picked it up.

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ORIGINAL: phoenix

£70 is cheap for it. Can't recall what I paid - whatever the release price was. The market is full of absolute unadulterated ****. It disappoints me terribly to see it happening - the dumbing down of all the initial promise that computer gaming offered. It's relentless. This game is more like art than entertainment. Like Skyhigh said, it is enriching. It makes you go to reality and delve deeper. It requires imagination to picture what is happening because all you've got are silly counters on the surface. Like Lieste said, it's fantastically scaleable. You can play it with minimal effort and detail or you can really go slow and click all the buttons and - and here is the thing - be provided with a mountain of info for your imagination to work on. It's all about providing a sense of reality that engages your imagination. It's a stand-out game and is outstanding in terms of the development of the AI that is crucial to achieving that. I've bought every iteration and will buy everything else Panther produces. I'm still playing BFTB now - how many years after release? - still learning, still not bored, and still playing against the AI!! I paid over £100 for that stupid bundle of rubbish that is EagleDynamics A10, glossy and beautiful but with no AI at all, as far as I can see. Not a game, not an enriching experience, not something that encourages any kind of engagement with history etc. Paid all that and bored to death within about ten hours. My fault, because of my flight dreams, perhaps, but the point is, BFTB is really exceptional in the treatment of AI. No one else is doing it the same. Closest thing might be something like CMSF or Normandy - but the silly little sprites depress me after a while. They are very far from realistic (along with the hexed terrain) - and there's no AI, again. You have to command everything. There's no nuance to it. I'd pay more for what Panther does, happily.

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ORIGINAL: Deathtreader

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ORIGINAL: phoenix

£70 is cheap for it. Can't recall what I paid - whatever the release price was. The market is full of absolute unadulterated ****. It disappoints me terribly to see it happening - the dumbing down of all the initial promise that computer gaming offered. It's relentless. This game is more like art than entertainment. Like Skyhigh said, it is enriching. It makes you go to reality and delve deeper. It requires imagination to picture what is happening because all you've got are silly counters on the surface. Like Lieste said, it's fantastically scaleable. You can play it with minimal effort and detail or you can really go slow and click all the buttons and - and here is the thing - be provided with a mountain of info for your imagination to work on. It's all about providing a sense of reality that engages your imagination. It's a stand-out game and is outstanding in terms of the development of the AI that is crucial to achieving that. I've bought every iteration and will buy everything else Panther produces. I'm still playing BFTB now - how many years after release? - still learning, still not bored, and still playing against the AI!! I paid over £100 for that stupid bundle of rubbish that is EagleDynamics A10, glossy and beautiful but with no AI at all, as far as I can see. Not a game, not an enriching experience, not something that encourages any kind of engagement with history etc. Paid all that and bored to death within about ten hours. My fault, because of my flight dreams, perhaps, but the point is, BFTB is really exceptional in the treatment of AI. No one else is doing it the same. Closest thing might be something like CMSF or Normandy - but the silly little sprites depress me after a while. They are very far from realistic (along with the hexed terrain) - and there's no AI, again. You have to command everything. There's no nuance to it. I'd pay more for what Panther does, happily.

Amen brother, amen.

Very well said...........

Rob.

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£70 is cheap for it. Can't recall what I paid - whatever the release price was.

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I wish there would be something like BftB on tactical level - I really miss a good AI when playing tactical level games.

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ORIGINAL: phoenix

£70 is cheap for it. Can't recall what I paid - whatever the release price was. The market is full of absolute unadulterated ****. It disappoints me terribly to see it happening - the dumbing down of all the initial promise that computer gaming offered. It's relentless. This game is more like art than entertainment. Like Skyhigh said, it is enriching. It makes you go to reality and delve deeper. It requires imagination to picture what is happening because all you've got are silly counters on the surface. Like Lieste said, it's fantastically scaleable. You can play it with minimal effort and detail or you can really go slow and click all the buttons and - and here is the thing - be provided with a mountain of info for your imagination to work on. It's all about providing a sense of reality that engages your imagination. It's a stand-out game and is outstanding in terms of the development of the AI that is crucial to achieving that. I've bought every iteration and will buy everything else Panther produces. I'm still playing BFTB now - how many years after release? - still learning, still not bored, and still playing against the AI!! I paid over £100 for that stupid bundle of rubbish that is EagleDynamics A10, glossy and beautiful but with no AI at all, as far as I can see. Not a game, not an enriching experience, not something that encourages any kind of engagement with history etc. Paid all that and bored to death within about ten hours. My fault, because of my flight dreams, perhaps, but the point is, BFTB is really exceptional in the treatment of AI. No one else is doing it the same. Closest thing might be something like CMSF or Normandy - but the silly little sprites depress me after a while. They are very far from realistic (along with the hexed terrain) - and there's no AI, again. You have to command everything. There's no nuance to it. I'd pay more for what Panther does, happily.

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ORIGINAL: johndoesecond

Look, even if there's a 3D representation of the battlefield in those CM engines, that's really not the way the on-the-field commanding works in the real world. There's this what I would call "Peter-Pan syndrome", which might be fun, engaging and attractive, but if you think about it a bit, it is fundamentally misleading.

I mean, no commander could levitate over the battlefield, roaming freely in the air.
So, at that scale, the commanding experience would be radically different than the one you get in CM, ToW and other similar games.

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ORIGINAL: phoenix

Sounds interesting - the Flashpoint thing. Truth is a WW2 commander would have nothing like the info we have available in BFTB/COTA/HTTR- especially about your own forces (fog of war, info delays etc should apply to own forces just as much as to enemy if you want realism). So compromises are still made - to provide a 'game' (not a simulation) in BFTB.

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ORIGINAL: phoenix

My memory of playing Flashpoint, however, was that the AI was very obviously scripted, just as it is in Combat Mission (Shock Force, Normandy and the rest) as far as the enemy goes, and very basic reactive AI as far as friendlies go. That's the big diff.

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ORIGINAL: phoenix

We all would probably like to have a gaming experience that would be like an hallucination- you are there, with just whhat a commander on the ground would have had available, seeing what he would have seen etc. That would suggest a 3d direction to develoment, and that's what all the development effort goes into at the moment, in the industry. But it will have to change. Because the graphics environment will only take you so far.

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ORIGINAL: phoenix

Aftere that AI is desperately needed to make the game, any game, challenging and gripping. And providing more graphic/environmentaldetail actually limits the gaps that your imagination can fill much better than any painting. Because that's what all the graphics are in all the other games - paintings. None of them - from top notch graphic intensive shooters such as Battlefield, down through Combat Mission and the like - none of them look even vaguely real when you compare them to reality or even pictures of reality. And maybe never will. Reality is so very detailed, so very dynamic. The truth is that games like BFTB, because they've concentrated on providing a realistic opponent and staff, come much closer to that immersive ideal that we all want, I suspect. Like Johndoesecond said- it's an endangered species. I just wish I had money to fund them in advance, to keep it going. Because I'm sure it must be only pocket money for them. Maybe we should write to Bill Gates ans suggest he give it a go - then sponsor them.....

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ORIGINAL: phoenix

What's the 'armoured brigade' link, Peturabo? Reluctant to click on it without more info.

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ORIGINAL: Arjuna

We have also kick started a new East Front development. This will be a new game with new features, focussing primarily on Soviet doctrine.